100. Reflections on a Century of Blogs
Isn’t it odd how certain numbers have a special significance? When I started writing my blogs, I had no idea whether I could manage to write ten of them, let alone a hundred. From the feedback I’ve received (and many thanks for that), it seems that my assortment of stories from the different corners of my life have been read with interest. It’s also achieved something quite unexpected. My family and some friends have nagged me for years to write my autobiography. I’ve lived an adventurous life, but I never seemed to find time to write about it. Now, large segments of that life have been recorded. One day I’ll probably link the elements together, instead of once a week thinking about “What should I write today?”
As we often do before settling down to the day’s tasks, my wife Hero and I watched some extracts from “America’s Got Talent” and similar shows featuring some remarkable performers – in particular, the young kids who astound the viewers with voices totally out of proportion with their tiny childlike bodies. As usual, there were some incredible performers. I’m frequently moved to tears and am not ashamed to say so. When I’d see the hopes and aspirations of others suddenly gain recognition and often wild applause, I used to wonder what it was that moved me to tears. Was it envy over their success? I hoped not but I did carefully examine the possibility.
I eventually came to the conclusion that, far from envy, I shed tears of joy over the success of others, especially in the arts. I firmly believe that every person, from every walk of life and background contains the elements necessary for creative expression. Sadly, for a number of reasons, burgeoning creative talent is stomped on, often at an early age. This suppression comes from a number of sources: parents who fear that their child will struggle in life if they want to become a singer, artist, writer, actor, etc., siblings or peer groups who are unashamedly jealous of the talent of others, or those few people in society who are obsessively determined that no one else should succeed.
The arts can be the purest expression of joy and love that bring people together in harmony, even for a few moments. Above all, successful art expresses a quality of communication and agreement not seen enough in day-to-day life. What constitutes good art? Simply ask yourself the question “Did it communicate to me?” Forget about what the critics say. No one should have the audacity to proclaim what painting is good or what novel or movie is exceptional. Did you enjoy it? Did it resonate with you? That’s what counts!
Every time I see a child (or adult for that matter) stand on stage and receive acclaim, I may shed tears, but they are tears of joy. I should make mention of a special performance we saw this morning. A blind and autistic boy was guided onto the stage by his mother. He sat at a piano, then proceeded to play and sing. It was a flawless and emotional performance that would have been remarkable for anyone his age. To achieve this with his severe disabilities was nothing short of magical. It once again validated the incredible power of art well performed.
I cannot claim to have been driven by an overriding desire to express myself in any particular form of the arts. I discovered early in life that I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t coordinate my fingers to play a musical instrument and was in awe of those who could. Nor could I persuade my right leg to not perform as a second left leg when I danced. I applaud Hero for her willingness to drag me around the dance floor in some semblance of rhythmical movement, when she was always such an incredible dancer herself.
I doubt if I would have ever discovered I could write, if it wasn’t for my eccentric English teacher at school who grew sick of reading essays on “What I did last holiday” or “My favorite film star” and other such mundane nonsense. He set us the task of writing an essay including such disparate items as a motor car, a letterbox, a penguin and a pencil (or something of the sort). As I’ve written previously, he gave my essay 100% minus 15% for minor offenses to the English language.
It made me realize that I had the ability to create a story line. But at age sixteen, I promptly forgot about it and concentrated on my rugby, hockey, athletics and even boxing. Somehow, I had better coordination on the sports field than on the dance floor. Only when I was nineteen and living on the edge of the Namib desert, did I even consider writing something.
When I talked my way into a job with BBC Television in London, it was only in order to earn enough money to get to Vancouver, Canada, where I had been offered a job if I played for their top rugby team. Thankfully, working in TV flipped some kind of mental switch and for the first time I realized that I was now in a profession that was, in its own way, just as exciting as running down the touchline in a rugby game and scoring a try (the best way to rack up points in rugby). It was also somewhat less physically demanding!
Doing studio shows with just an occasional outside broadcast, on the production side for three years, made me realize that the medium of television was not exactly what I had in mind for the rest of my life. I realized that I wanted to direct documentaries and stay out of the studios as much as I could. Somewhere in the distance, I had a vague idea of graduating to theatrical feature movies. Writing the scripts was for me almost an afterthought.
I had some wonderful years making documentaries, which included my writing, directing and often producing them with a tiny crew. I won a number of international awards for these documentaries and in due course began to experiment with writing movie screenplays for others to direct. This also led to writing television dramas and even occasional comedies.
My dream of success was to eventually direct a full-length theatrical feature for the cinema. Writing was still in second place, but I always saw my role as an “auteur” (writer/director).
Another tipping point in my life was when I started writing a weekly serial on the website of a client. There had been a lull in the movie and TV industry, so I looked for some other way of earning a living. The serial was designed to bring the readers back to the client’s website over and over again, so that any new data promoting the client’s business or service could be seen by the reader of what I rather miscalled my “Cyber Soapies.” I like to think that the serials were rather more intelligent than the typical TV “soapie.” Each episode of the action/adventure romance contained a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter.
Over the months, and in fact years, that I wrote these “Cyber Soapies,” I evolved a completely different approach to my writing. Previously with my movie screenplays, I spent many weeks developing the storyline in treatment form as well as writing the backstories of my major characters. This didn’t work for my “soapies” as I had to produce an episode a week. So, after working out a rough storyline of no more than a page, I simply sat down and wrote an episode a week. All my years of writing screenplays and TV series had created a mental process that allowed me to do all the necessary planning in my head. I even started to play a game with myself, whereby my weekly cliffhanger at the end of the episode often painted me into a corner. I would spend the following few days trying to figure out how to get out of the end of the previous episode where the hero was about to fall off a cliff or something of the sort.
That was from 2001 until about 2004. My first “soapie” was written for a country hotel called Sparkling Waters and was so successful that it ran for two years. It was only in about 2013 when I relocated to the UK from Johannesburg that I realized that I had enough material for two novels from my weekly “soapies.”
After trying in vain to find an agent to represent me, I had the huge good fortune to be approached by Andrea Grant-Webb, a person highly experienced in the publishing world, selling existing fiction and non-fiction books at book fairs. She had decided to finally branch into publishing new books herself. Her company, Pagoda Tree Books, was prepared to publish my two novels on condition that I wrote the third novel in the series to create the Willjohn Trilogy. This I did in 2020 and early 2021, 19 years after the first two novels. The main character in the third novel Surviving Treachery is the daughter of the original couple Ed and Elke Willjohn, maintaining the family saga. The first novel Pursuit of Treachery is already published as a paperback, available in bookshops in the UK and US or by order from publisher. It is also on Amazon/Kindle. The second novel Deceit of Treachery will be available in June 2022 and the third by the end of the year.
By the way, I still have under consideration by two finance groups a movie screenplay, which I will co-produce – having decided that at age 85 to attempt to direct my first feature would be unrealistic.
Then, of course, my main activity over the past five years has been writing for ExoTech Ltd. As well as my weekly blogs, I have written the first draft of a book which outlines the early life of ExoTech’s founder and creator, Peter Warren, leading up to the earliest development of the ExoBrain. Like myself, Peter has lived an extremely adventurous life; the book promises to be both informative and entertaining. The fact that I have remained involved with ExoTech, in addition to my fictional writing, underlines its huge promise as an exciting new development in computing. ExoTech will also create a paradigm shift in establishing a platform where honest and truthful communications may remain protected indefinitely. I am very proud to be part of this evolution.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.